Changing the shell prompt Post: 302423755

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Changing the shell prompt Post 302423755 by Scott on Saturday 22nd of May 2010 06:32:02 AM

05-22-2010

Administrator Emeritus

That's the right result! And now when you change directory, the prompt will change.

PS1 is described in the man page, in this case from KSH:

Code:

PS1    The  value of this variable is expanded for parameter expansion, command substitution, and arith-
                     metic substitution to define the primary prompt string which by default is ``$''.  The  character
                     !   in  the primary prompt string is replaced by the command number (see Command Re-entry below).
                     Two successive occurrences of !  will produce a single !  when the prompt string is printed.

Setting PS1 in this way is only temporary. Set (or modify) it in your $HOME/.profile to make it permanent, so it's there each time you log in.

There's not much to my prompt, or .profile, but I set in there:

Code:

$ cat .profile
alias ll='ls -al'
set -o vi
export EDITOR=vi
PATH=$PATH:/Users/scott/bin
PS1='$PWD $ '

Depending on your system, the default PS1 could be defined somewhere in /etc: /etc/profile, /etc/environment, /etc/bashrc, etc.

Scott

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LEARN ABOUT MINIX

chsh

CHSH(1)                                                            User Commands                                                           CHSH(1)

NAME

       chsh - change login shell

SYNOPSIS

       chsh [options] [LOGIN]

DESCRIPTION

       The chsh command changes the user login shell. This determines the name of the user's initial login command. A normal user may only change
       the login shell for her own account; the superuser may change the login shell for any account.

OPTIONS

       The options which apply to the chsh command are:

       -h, --help
           Display help message and exit.

       -R, --root CHROOT_DIR
           Apply changes in the CHROOT_DIR directory and use the configuration files from the CHROOT_DIR directory.

       -s, --shell SHELL
           The name of the user's new login shell. Setting this field to blank causes the system to select the default login shell.

       If the -s option is not selected, chsh operates in an interactive fashion, prompting the user with the current login shell. Enter the new
       value to change the shell, or leave the line blank to use the current one. The current shell is displayed between a pair of [ ] marks.

NOTE

       The only restriction placed on the login shell is that the command name must be listed in /etc/shells, unless the invoker is the superuser,
       and then any value may be added. An account with a restricted login shell may not change her login shell. For this reason, placing /bin/rsh
       in /etc/shells is discouraged since accidentally changing to a restricted shell would prevent the user from ever changing her login shell
       back to its original value.

FILES

       /etc/passwd
           User account information.

       /etc/shells
           List of valid login shells.

       /etc/login.defs
           Shadow password suite configuration.

SEE ALSO

       chfn(1), login.defs(5), passwd(5).

shadow-utils 4.5                                                    01/25/2018                                                             CHSH(1)

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